"I'm not an environmentalist," says Grant Goodman.
"I'm just attuned to business ethics." The
45-year-old entrepreneur is CEO of six companies, but his flagship
business is Rockland Materials--which employs 230 people and brings
in $40 million a year making building materials like ready-mix
cement. He works out of Phoenix, a city known for having a
"brown cloud" over it. But none of the pollution comes
from Rockland Materials, the largest commercial user of biodiesel
fuel in the country. Yes, Goodman's 120 trucks run primarily on
soybeans. The fuel is biodegradable, nontoxic and virtually free of
sulfur-earning him a prestigious EPA award and high praise in
publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to
Soybean Digest.

Since you can clearly make money as a
pro-environment business, why aren't more companies doing
it?

Grant Goodman: The honest
truth is, it's not as profitable. It's something that needs
to be considered, evaluated and implemented irrespective of the
profit mode. The primary thrust is, What does it do for the
environment? Look, it's great to have job creation and
distribution of wealth and all the other bells and whistles, but if
you're killing everybody you're trying to employ, what good
is it? Second, until the federal and state governments place a
premium on businesses run with environmentally friendly policies,
it's not going to be a moneymaker; it's going to be a money
loser. But you have to have the backbone, as an entrepreneur, to
take a posture that reconciles the profit mode with the desire to
make things in sync with the environment.

So what can entrepreneurs do to make
their companies more planet-friendly?

Goodman: A lot of businesses
won't have to address that issue, because they can't really
positively or negatively impact the environment tremendously. If
you run an accounting firm, can you recycle your paper? Can you
carpool? I guess that's something. But in other industries that
affect the environment, like what I'm in, I look at it as an
opportunity to really do something. And this is a decision that
doesn't need to be made by committee. If you don't have the
stomach for it, nothing's ever going to happen. But a guy by
himself can really change things dramatically.

So if you're an entrepreneur,
it's easier to make an impact on the environment than the CEOs
of some of the bureaucratic international
corporations?

Goodman: It's the
reverse. They have the cash; they have the logistics people.
They've got everything I don't have. It should really be a
cakewalk, if they cared about it.